Day 112

5.02: Para bailar La Bamba se necessita una poca de gracia.

Holy crap that’s a catchy song. It digs itself into your head like a burrowing tick riding out an air raid by the insect Luftwaffe. I’ve got imaginary Mexicans caterwauling into a circular system of ear trumpets that’s plumbed directly into my subconsious. If ever Freud came poking around in here, he’d have the twelve Mariachi of the apocalypse to get past before he could even start investigating how I feel about my penis.

Yo no soy marinero, yo no soy marinero; soy Capitan, soy Capitan.

Club me with shovels and bludgeon my face into a juggernaut, I’m still going to be singing that song for the rest of my born days. You know that bit in Angels in America when Al Pacino says –

“I picked-up some super crabs from some kid. Took 20 drenchings of Kwell…finally shaving to get rid of the little bastards. Nothing could kill ‘em. And every time I had an itch I’d smile… because I learned to respect them. These unkillable crabs”?

– that’s what this is like. Except my unkillable super crabs are a mambo-based quasi-traditional Flemenco folk song. And there’s men in hard shoes and hats like planets stamping the thing out over the disintergrating tiling of my mental dancefloor. Harder to shake off than Catholicism. I feel like one of those blokes you read about in local newspapers who’s had hiccoughs for a hundred years, and still hasn’t managed to choke on his own spasmodic diaphragm.

But like a tapeworm, I’m learning to love it. And I’m eating for thirteen now, what with me and all the hallucinogenic earworm-induced Mariachi. Arriba. More chilaquiles all round.

6.53: Soy no Capitan. That one was particularly tough going. At times it was only the treadmilling mosquito of La Bamba fizzing in my head that kept me upright. But still, we’re staggering broken and demented to the end of something that looks remarkably like a novel. After 112 posts, complaints, burglaries, and a thousand sleep-deprived delusions, let’s hope it’s not shit.